Father of son murdered in Parkland school shooting speaks in Troy about school safety

TROY, N.Y. (NEWS10) - National school safety advocate Max Schachter spoke to nearly 200 people at the Bulmer Telecommunications Center Auditorium at Hudson Valley Community College on Wednesday, November 20 from 8 a.m. to noon. Schachter became a national school safety after his son, Alex, a freshman who attended Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, was killed in a school shooting in 2018.

The presentation was put on by Schachter as well as local law enforcement, school administrators, and state officials. They were invited by the Big 5 school districts in the state to share details of events that led up to the day of the shooting and how actions can be taken going forward to prevent something like that from happening again. Schachter said that no one person can make a change on their own.

"Everybody has to play a role in making school safer," Schachter said. "After my son, Alex, was murdered in the Parkland school shooting, I wanted to do everything I could to make sure that the devastation never happened to another family, so my mission in life is to keep my little boy's memory alive and to make sure that never happened again, so I appreciate the partnership of the sheriff, and the school districts to come together to, do everything they can to make sure this never happens again."

Schachter has founded Safe Schools for Alex after his son was killed, which works to provide most current school safety best practices and resources to students, parents, school districts, and law enforcement so that all children can learn in a safe environment. At Wednesday's presentation, Schachter shared his experience working to change policies within school systems to make them safer and how he plans to help other schools across the entire nation do it.

"Florida has implemented mandates throughout the state because if the students and the staff don’t make it home for the families every day, nothing else matters," Schachter said. "So in Florida, we prioritize school safety before education because you can’t teach dead kids, and so in Florida, we have armed officers at every K-12 campus throughout the state; we are mandating threat assessment teams in every school and in every school district, we’ve got panic buttons in every school.”

Schachter has advocated for policy change at the highest levels of the United States government and worked alongside members of Congress and presidents of the United States to make schools safer. Schachter has also worked to improve the safety and security of Florida’s 2.4 million students through his appointment to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Commission.

The Rensselaer County Sheriff, Kyle Bourgault, said that he hopes local administrators can learn from Schachter and put his practices to use in the Capital Region.

"What we're trying to do is learn; that's why we're all here," Bourgault said. "What worked, what didn't work; we have these types of incidences. It's a big puzzle, and we don't know the puzzle until it's all put together. So put it together and dissect. Thanks to Max for helping us understand exactly what happened and taking it piece by piece to try to figure out what went wrong and what we can do to change things in the future and prevent tragedies like that."